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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116758">corpse nails</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice'>deliveryservice</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>College, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:40:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Akaashi walks into his life. He doesn’t leave space for Osamu to flush him out.</p>
</blockquote><br/>Love is held in the fingernails.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akaashi Keiji/Miya Osamu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>corpse nails</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunrios/gifts">sunrios</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>cw: some graphic depiction of the clipping of nails - its pain, some blood, etc - at the very last passage.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”</p><p>Richard Siken, from Little Beast.</p><p> </p><p>Osamu’s ma told him white flecks on his nails were a sign of a crush. Each dot marked one person who had a crush on you: More dots meant more admirers.</p><p>Atsumu believed her. He’d shown off the flecks on his nails with pride, chest always puffing with the realization he was adored. Osamu still remembers the look on his face when he’d shown him that, according to science, white flecks didn’t mean someone had a crush on you - it was a sign of calcium deficiency.</p><p>“You mean,” Atsumu fumbles with his words, looking stricken, “that doesn't mean people like me?”</p><p>“Not romantically,” Osamu says placidly, because the only thing worse than a sad Atsumu is a dramatically sad Atsumu. “It’s okay. You’ll live.”</p><p>If he’d said that sarcastically, nobody knows but him. Atsumu, only thirteen at the time, had been less than in tune with the intricacies of sarcasm. Osamu knows this because Atsumu wears his heart on his sleeve. Osamu wears his on his cheek, ready to be smudged any time he needs.</p><p>“So you're saying.” Horror sinks its claws into Atsumu’s face. “That time I kept trying to clue in Aya-chan about her crush on me, it could’ve meant she didn’t actually have a crush at all?!”</p><p>Osamu pats his back, snickering into his hand as Atsumu recalls all the times he’d been confident in his assumptions. This is Atsumu’s first genuine heartbreak: Flecks of white in nails digging razor-sharp talons into an unexpectedly sensitive heart. For Osamu, this is just another day.</p><p>✦</p><p>Akaashi squeezes his way into Osamu’s life in Tokyo.</p><p>“I heard you were looking for a new roommate.” That much is true: Osamu’s previous roommate moved out after one too many incidents with the fire alarm. Osamu had only complained about his living arrangements to Atsumu, who must’ve told someone, and that someone must’ve told Akaashi.</p><p>Akaashi, Osamu realizes, is even prettier when the net isn’t obscuring his face.</p><p>“I am,” Osamu says. He doesn’t know what else to say with Akaashi Keiji, the prettiest setter in the whole Tokyo area - and maybe Japan - is standing at his doorstep.</p><p>Osamu doesn’t know how to talk to pretty boys; it’s embarrassing, actually. He knows how to form the right words, but doesn’t know where to grasp the courage to say them. He knows how to stare at pretty boys; knows how to admire them. But <em>talking</em> to them? There’s a reason why his and Suna’s friendship bloomed so late, Osamu only burgeoning the courage to get closer to him nearing their final year of high school. As Atsumu would’ve put it: “Shit’s pathetic, man.”</p><p>“I’m looking for a new one, too,” Akaashi says. He’s patient with Osamu’s fumbling awkwardness. Under the flickering bulb, his features are illuminated with faint amusement. “Can I come in?”</p><p>Akaashi walks into his life. He doesn’t leave space for Osamu to flush him out.</p><p>✦</p><p>As far as roommates go, Akaashi is both the worst and best roommate Osamu has ever had.</p><p>Akaashi brews coffee for the both of them in the morning. He memorizes Osamu’s preferences by their first day, and on the next, Osamu wakes to find a steaming cup waiting for him on their shared coffee table in front of the TV. Akaashi does household chores without being asked. Osamu’s had to wrestle - like <em>physically</em> wrestle - the vacuum cleaner away from him once, on the weekend, just to get him to let Osamu take his turn to clean up.</p><p>By all means, Akaashi should be the perfect roommate.</p><p>He is not. Akaashi makes coffee for Osamu in the morning and always looks at Osamu while he drinks, keen eyes watching his every sip. “Is it good?” he would ask, and Osamu would always nod, his hands shaking. His fingers always tremor when Akaashi looks at him like that; like Osamu is the only person there, the only one who matters.</p><p>It’s not fair. Osamu thinks Akaashi is aware of the effect he has on him. There’s no logical reason why he would always make sure his gaze lingers, or why Akaashi would leave his thumb resting on Osamu’s hipbone after they wrestle for the vacuum cleaner. Akaashi knows he’s driving Osamu mad and he always does enough to leave Osamu hovering on the edge for more.</p><p>“Osamu,” Akaashi calls him. He doesn’t slur Osamu’s name, makes every syllable clear: <em>O-sa-mu.</em> “Tell me a secret.”</p><p>They’re drunk on cheap wine, lounging on their couch with a movie playing in the background. Osamu has his head on Akaashi’s lap. Akaashi’s fingers, where he’d tossed victories but never to Osamu, are gentle as they tangle through his hair.</p><p>Osamu feels naked. Raw and scabbed and vulnerable, baring his neck instead of his teeth to Akaashi. <em>See me</em>, he doesn’t say. <em>I want you to love me</em>. “I used to think the little white dots on your nails symbolized crushes. The ones on your right hand,” he says. His voice is hoarse. He wants to drink Akaashi in - maybe then it’ll quench the flame burning in his throat.</p><p>“What do they mean?” Akaashi asks. He checks his nails. On his right hand, waving at Osamu from his forefinger is a single white dot. Osamu clutches Akaashi’s finger with his, his thumb smoothing over the mark. He almost kisses it.</p><p>“Calcium deficiency. Or zinc. It just means you’re lacking minerals or vitamins,” Osamu says, allowing his fingers to stroke Akaashi’s a little more before reluctantly letting them go. Akaashi gently eyes with him with amusement and fondness, mixed in one forbidden drink Osamu can never have.</p><p>“What happens if you cut your nails?” Akaashi asks. He’s not talking about vitamin deficiency, that much is clear.</p><p>Osamu’s never thought about it before. His ma never told him either. “Maybe you’ll be cutting away their feelings.”</p><p>“Isn’t that brutal, Osamu?” <em>O-sa-mu</em>.</p><p>Osamu thinks about love, when it is unrequited. How sometimes it is kinder to let someone down than letting them chase empty hopes - maybe, for some, cutting off someone’s love would be a favour. “I guess it depends on the situation.”</p><p>“I can’t think of any situation when it’d be kind,” Akaashi confides. Osamu looks at Akaashi and thinks about how beautiful, how distant, he looks at night. How his lashes kiss his cheeks when he blinks. How his smiles, rare and soft as they are, leave Osamu feeling like he’s won the lottery. Akaashi can’t think of it as a mercy, Osamu realizes, because he can’t see Akaashi as someone who’d be on the unrequited end of love.</p><p><em>Who couldn’t love him?</em> is all Osamu repeats.</p><p>“If that’s the right hand, then what about the left?”</p><p>Akaashi’s nails on his left hand are unmarred. They are clean and perfectly cut.</p><p>“Ma said it was for hatred, but I liked to think it could’ve been the other end - if the right is someone else’s feelings, maybe the left is yours.”</p><p>✦</p><p>The white mark on Akaashi’s forefinger doesn’t fade. He laughs about this with Osamu, who forces a smile. On Osamu’s left forefinger is a pale, milky white dot, equivalent to Akaashi’s. To Osamu it is a scar that refuses to vanquish. Akaashi’s own left hand is free of any sign, his nailbeds a perfect pinkish red.</p><p>Osamu asks his ma to mail him a nail clipper. She doesn’t ask, but Osamu has the feeling she knows.</p><p>Akaashi is out when Osamu locks himself in the bathroom. He clips his nails until his the skin of his fingers turn raw, until his cuticles bleed and every blow of the wind stings his skin - stings hard enough it leaves his eyes a matching red, the blur of water drowning his gaze. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.</p><p>He doesn’t stop until he gets the white out of his nail. And then he flushes everything down the toilet, a tissue wrapping his wounded finger like a gauze.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>talk to me on <a href="https://twitter.com/genshinkaeya">twitter</a></p><p>fun fact: the thing about nails is actually true. not that it signifies who has a crush on u for sure etc etc, but i grew up thinking it, and i enjoyed comparing the amount of flecks in my nails compared to my friends. my record was ten and i think i seriously needed to drink more vitamins. anyways!!!! i hope you enjoyed this. feel free to leave kudos or a comment if you did. no pressure.<br/>i've also only skimmed through it once, after writing most of this in a writing-hazed frenzy, and i will most likely come back to it every now and then to make edits. as i always do.</p><p>as always, take care.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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